History of Tattoo Machines
Wednesday November 17, 2004
Samuel O'Reilly invented the electric tattooing machine in 1891. O'Reilly improved upon an earlier tattoo machine invented by Thomas Edison that did not succeed commercially.
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Comments
Was there ever any changes into the tattoo machine?
Considering I am probably the only Tattoo Artist in The World related to Edison (his son, Dash, married a cousin, Marie Toohey) it really hacks me off every time I see O’Reilly’s name attributed to inventing the first Tattoo Machine. He didn’t. He took Edisons work, made a few minor changes and claimed it as his own. It doesn’t matter that Edison’s machine was not a commercial success. What matters is that there was a machine there in the first place for O’Reilly to rip off.
And it was 1873 that Edison invented it and 1875 that O’Reilly plagiarised it. Ooooh that makes me mad!